Bandit is my future husband? How can that be? The husband in my vision said that line about the ordinary miracle. Zeke’s line. I assumed my older self would marry Zeke. Not Bandit. Zeke.

Why does my older self want me to kill the boy I end up marrying? Who clearly loves me? Why, why, why?

My consciousness zooms out of my hiding space. Crashes into one side of my older self’s brain. Ricochets into the other. Bounces back and forth, up and down, and I can’t control the motion. I can’t rein it in, even though I know that I must. Even though I’m risking this entire mission.

I don’t get it.

I don’t get it.

I don’t get it.

My older self gasps. “Bandit! She’s here! Young Alice. Her consciousness. She must’ve snuck to the future somehow.”

“Send her back,” he says grimly. “Before she ruins everything.”

Nooooooo!

I dig into this present with everything I have. Curl my consciousness into our physical body and hold on tight. The cold, hard rock underneath our bare feet, bits of dust pushing up between our toes. The air hitting the back of our throat as our mouth gapes in a soundless scream. This warm, loving man standing before us, looking at us with those deep, familiar eyes.

“Don’t worry, Malice,” he says. “I’ll fix this. I won’t let her mess up everything we’ve worked for.”

I’m not the enemy, I want to say. I’m only looking for the truth.

But even if I had control of our mouth, it’s too late.

ZIIIIP.

With a ferocity that makes her last ejection seem tame, my older self detaches my consciousness, drop-kicking me out of her brain.

I shoot into the void. The space between times, the one through which I traveled to get to the future.

But I’m not ready to go back. I still don’t understand. I need more answers.

Gathering every filament and strand of my consciousness, I stretch into the void. In a realm with no gravity and no friction, I imagine putting the brakes on my forward motion. I will my velocity to slow—and then stop.

What do you know? It actually works.

I’m floating in deep black space, instead of being hurled through it. I have no limbs. My body and head and lips cease to exist.

Automatically, I look down. There! Underneath me. The colorful stream of my life. But I won’t fall in randomly this time. I’ll wait and watch for just the right moment. The time that will tell me the truth. The days that will explain everything.

The images slide by, faster and faster.

Alice breaks up with Zeke, the day after she accidentally fondles Bandit at the club. A week after that, she shows up on Bandit’s doorstep, after hunting him down through the friend of a friend.